F. L. Lucas's From Many Times and Lands (1953) is a volume of some one hundred original poems, mostly dramatic monologues, vignettes, and narratives, based on historical episodes "that seem lastingly alive".[1] Varying in length from sixteen pages to a few lines (most are two or three pages long), and written largely between 1935 and 1953, the poems were intended to show, in Lucas's words in the Preface, that "The Greeks were right. The essential theme is men in action. That has been the greatness of the West."[2] They were thus a reaction to the "soul-scratching" interiority of mid-20th century modernist verse (The Times Literary Supplement's phrase[3]). Lucas quotes approvingly "the wise Acton": 'History must be our deliverer, not only from the undue influence of other times, but from the undue influence of our own'. In one of the poems ('Ivan the Terrible') he has the explorer Anthony Jenkinson discuss with a number of English poets and playwrights in a London tavern in 1597 the authority of Marlowe's Tamburlaine as history:
| Author | F. L. Lucas |
|---|---|
| Genre | historical poetry |
| Publisher | The Bodley Head |
Publication date | April 1953 |
| Pages | 318 |
| "I try to find episodes in history that seem lastingly alive: and try to make them live on paper."[1] ... "We have had too many Narcissi murmuring unintelligibly over their own reflections in shallow, often muddy pools. 'I and she.' 'I and Nature.' 'I and God.' 'I and myself.' ..."[2] |
- ... Give me a poet [says Jenkinson]
- That holds the mirror, not to his own features,
- But to the infinite mystery of men...
- Often I think – 'Why should not poets be
- Truthful as histories - and historians
- Visioned as poets?'
- You feed upon your dreams; they, on the world.
- You live for feeling; and for knowledge they.
- And each, alone, grows barren.
Jenkinson then goes on to speak of the impressions he took away from his meetings with Tsar Ivan IV.
Title and subtitle
editThe book's title is taken from Swinburne's 'The Garden of Proserpine'. The dust-cover and back-strip of the first edition (but not the title-page) carried the subtitle 'Poems of Legend and History'. "They are not always factually true," wrote Lucas of these pieces. "But what men could believe, even falsely, is also part – and not the least part – of human history. Wherever historic facts are concerned, I have tried to distort them as little as possible. Where episodes are invented, I have tried to keep them true to the spirit of their time."[2]
Sources and dates
editApproximate or exact dates appear below poem titles. Sources for incidents are given in footnotes to about half the poems. The note to 'Olver Barnakarl', for example, reads:
- Cf. the Icelandic Landnáma-Bóc, V. 13. i: 'Olver Barnakarl was a nobleman in Norway. He would not let children be thrown on spearpoints, as was the Vikings' custom. Therefore he was called "Barnakarl" [:Bairns' man].'
Some subjects treated
edit| 'Nemroud's Tower' | 4th-3rd millennium B.C. | on Birs Nimrud |
| 'The Eyes of Amenemhet' | c.1800 B.C. | on Amenemhat III |
| 'The End of Akhnaton' | 14th century B.C. | on Akhenaten and Nefertiti |
| 'The Archaeologist-king' | 539 B.C. | Nabonidus |
| 'The Elbe frontier' | 9 B.C. | Drusus the Elder |
| 'The Pipe of Peace' | A.D. 315 | Liu Kun |
| 'The Smile that cost an Empire' | A.D. 755-6 | Emperor Ming Huang and Yang Kwei-fei |
| 'The Sister of Haroun' | 803 | Ja'far ibn Yahya, Harun al-Rashid, Zubaidah bint Ja'far |
| 'Olver Barnakarl' | c.850 | Olver Einarsson |
| 'The Daughter of Firdausi' | 1020-25 | Ferdowsi |
| 'The Lord of Athens' | 1225 | Othon and Isabelle de la Roche |
| 'The End of Genghiz' | 1227 | Yelü Chucai and Genghis Khan |
| 'The Grass of Cambalu' | 1270 | Kublai Khan |
| 'Corrievreckan' | 13th century | the Lords of Islay |
| 'King Hal' | 1421 | Siege of Meaux, Sir John Cornwall, Henry V |
| 'The Repentance of Gabrino Fondolo' | 1425 | Cabrino Fondulo |
| 'History' | 1420–1437 | Catherine of Valois and Sir Owen Tudor |
| 'The Last Hope of Constantinople' | 1453 | Fall of Constantinople |
| 'Dusk of the Renaissance' | 1463 | Sigismondo Malatesta and Gemistos Plethon |
| 'The lilied town' | 1478 | Florence and Botticelli |
| 'New heavens and new earth' | c.1542 | Columbus's remains, Luther, Copernicus |
| 'Ivan the Terrible' | c.1597 | Anthony Jenkinson on Tsar Ivan IV |
| 'The Friend of Essex' | 1600 | Francis Bacon |
| 'Stella's end' | 1607 | Penelope Devereux |
| 'The Old Queen's Maid of Honour' | 1613 | Elizabeth I |
| 'A tale of two centuries' | 1786-1815 | Eléonor de Sabron and Delphine de Sabron |
| 'The Doomed' | 1775 | Louis XVI |
| 'The Buried Saviour' | 1814-5 | Napoleon |
| 'Doom and the Poet' | November 17, 1820 | Keats |
| 'Wings of a Dove' | c.1855 | Charles Darwin |
| 'Rose of Parnell' | 1880-91 | Charles Stewart Parnell |
| 'The Neutrality of Éire' | 1939 | Irish neutrality during World War II |
| 'Leave' | 1939 | returning to Cambridge from Bletchley Park |
| 'The dead of Oran' | 1940 | the attack on Mers-el-Kébir |
| 'Before the landing in Normandy' | 1944 | Normandy landings |
Themes
editA number of the longer poems explore the techniques of handling, one-to-one, dangerous people in positions of absolute power. Cases in point include the court poet Yuan Shen and Emperor Ming Huang in 'The Smile that cost an Empire'; Sir John Cornwall and Henry V (after the death of Sir John's son at the Siege of Maux) in 'King Hal'; Anthony Jenkinson and Tsar Ivan in 'Ivan the Terrible'; and counsellor Yeliu Chutsai and Genghiz Khan in 'The End of Genghiz'.
Verse forms
editA variety of stanzaic forms, rhyme-schemes and metres are employed, as well as heroic couplets, blank verse, accentual verse, and free verse. The last stanza of 'The dead of Oran', on the funerals of French sailors killed in the Royal Navy's destruction of the French Fleet in 1940:
- Far to the north the great men sit;
- Laval in Vichy plies his pen.
- But here a different greatness lives —
- The faith, the courage, that forgives —
- In simpler men.
Reception
edit
The Times Literary Supplement wrote of the volume: "The excitement is unequalled by any but a very few volumes of verse published these last few years. This is poetry written to be read aloud, to be relished for its information, to be taken to bed and read, like a detective novel, for the relaxation that comes from a good story well told... These are stories in poetry. The poetry is not the worse for the story, but the story is infinitely more compelling for being set in verse."[3]
A number of the poems were reprinted in mid-20th century anthologies, notably two of the most gruesome: 'The Repentance of Gabrino Fondolo, Lord of Cremona',[4] a Browning-esque dramatic monologue about Fondolo's regret, as he awaits execution, at the opportunity he missed of throwing the Pope, the Holy Roman Emperor, and the Doge from the top of Cremona tower on their joint visit to his city as guests;[5] and 'Spain, 1809', the story of a village woman's revenge on some French soldiers during the Peninsular War,[6] which Margaret Wood turned into a stage-play, A Kind of Justice (1966). Among poems reprinted that were based on legend rather than history was 'The Destined Hour' (1953), a re-telling in verse of the old Arabic 'Appointment in Samarra' fable.[7][8]
References
edit- ^ a b Lucas, F. L., Journal Under the Terror, 1938 (London, 1939), p.229-230
- ^ a b c Lucas, F. L., Preface to From Many Times and Lands (London, 1953), p.11-13
- ^ a b 'Stories in Verse', The Times Literary Supplement, 31 July 1953
- ^ Stories in Modern Verse, ed. Maurice Wollman (Harrap, London, 1970)
- ^ Lucas found the story in E. J. Kitts, Pope John the Twenty-Third and Master John Hus of Bohemia (London, 1910)
- ^ The Harrap Book of Modern Verse, ed. Maurice Wollman and Kathleen Parker (London, 1958); The Penguin Book of Narrative Verse, ed. David Herbert (Harmondsworth, 1960)
- ^ Every Poem Tells a Story: A Collection of Stories in Verse, ed. Raymond Wilson (London, 1988); ISBN 0-670-82086-5 / 0-670-82086-5)
- ^ Lucas, F. L., 'The Destined Hour' (online text), www.funtrivia.com